One of our customers, a devops software company running NetSuite as their ERP, came to our Customer Success team with something slightly different than usual — they came to us with a solution!
Normally, our team works hard to help customers use our products as efficiently as possible. But in this case, this customer was able to find what they were looking for on their own, by modifying Strongpoint’s Customization Impact Search form.
An Admin's Search for Clarity
In this case, a NetSuite Admin received a request to edit a custom field on a record she thought might be using the logic of another script. In order to ensure that changing the field wouldn’t break anything, she needed to understand all of the customizations sitting on it.
Fortunately, Strongpoint does this really well, and very quickly.
Using the Customization Impact Search Form, she discovered that the field in question wasn’t being used in a specific script like she had originally thought, but instead by a saved search. With this info, she was able to safely edit the custom field (without having to rely on what we call Scream Theory).
This is all pretty standard for an Admin using Strongpoint. But here’s where things gets interesting.
Digging Deeper
After finding a saved search connected to a custom field in her account, this NetSuite superstar wanted to go a step further and find all saved searches being used by a Script or Workflow. And while this is well within Strongpoint’s capabilities, she needed to go a step further and actually tweak Strongpoint’s search logic in order for her custom report to include the criteria she was looking for.
This is easy to do using the Customization Impact Search Form. Simply enter the ScriptID or name of the Field you want to search, and you'll get an at-a-glance look at all the dependencies sitting on it — in other words, everything that could be affected if you make a change. You can also use the Owner and Type filters for even more granular results:
Customizing the Impact Search Form
We created the Search Impact Form to be as user-friendly as possible — giving Admins an easy way to get the data they need most frequently. However, it's also fully editable; for our Admins, it was a jumping off point that allowed her to create a custom search using modified logic.
Here's how she did it.
- First, click the “Edit This Search” button at the top left hand of the Customization Impact Search Form screen.
- Click over to the Criteria tab and add the parameters that will help us find the data we're looking for
- To build out a new search to find all saved searches being used in Scripts, we'll add three criteria:
-
- The Inactive filter should be set to No
- The Type field should be set to Search
- The Formula (Text) field should be set to Is not empty
Here's what your search should look like:
(Note: There are a few different ways to get this information, but in our experience, using the Formula (Text) field is the fastest and most reliable)
To search for Workflows instead, simply change the Type criteria to Workflow — or select both to collect the results in a single search.
Ultimately, the potential for customizing Strongpoint’s Search Form can be scoped as wide as your own knowledge of the NetSuite platform — the more versed you are in NetSuite semantics, the easier it will be to find the data you need.
Of course, our Customer Success Managers are always on hand to answer any questions or help you use the system better — and we're constantly adapting our tools based on user feedback.
The Bottom Line
Stories like this aren't just about the versatility of our products. They're about solving problems. In this case, our customer was able to make the change she needed to the original field without tying up a developer or potentially affecting the integrity of the system as whole.
Head to our NetSuite Use Cases for more information on Strongpoint for NetSuite or learn more about NetSuite Documentation — and if you’re looking for help with a specific Strongpoint functionality, contact support today support@strongpoint.io.
